Revelation Space 3 - Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds

Author:Alastair Reynolds [Reynolds, Alastair]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-04-06T11:57:27+00:00

CHAPTER 21

When they were safely clear of the atmosphere and the carnelian-red marble had vanished from the extreme range of her ship’s radar, Khouri found the courage to take hold of one of the black cubes that had been left behind when the main mass of Inhibitor machinery had fragmented. The cube was shockingly cold to the touch, and when she let go of it she left behind two thin films of detached flesh on opposite faces of the cube, like pink fingerprints. Her fingertips were now red-raw and smooth. For a moment she thought the removed skin would stay adhered to the smooth black sides, but after a few seconds the two sheets of flesh peeled away of their own accord, forming delicate translucent flakes like insects’ discarded wings. The cube’s cold black sides were as pitilessly dark and unmarred as before. But she noticed that the cube was shrinking, the contraction so odd and unexpected that her mind interpreted it as the cube receding into an impossible distance. All around her, the other cubes were echoing the contraction, their size diminishing by a half with every second that passed. Within a minute there was nothing left in the cabin but films of grey-black ash. She even felt ash accumulate at the corners of her eyes, like a sudden attack of sleepy dust, and was reminded that the cubes had reached into her head before the marble had arrived.

“Well, you got your demonstration,” she said to Thorn. “Was it worth it, just to make a point?”

“I had to know. But I couldn’t know what was going to happen.”

Khouri rubbed circulation back into her hands where they had grown numb. It was good to be out of the restraint webbing that Thorn had put her in. He apologised for that, without very much in the way of conviction. She had to admit that she would never have confessed to the truth without such extreme coercion.

“What did happen, by the way?” Thorn added.

“I don’t know. Not all of it anyway. We provoked a response, and I’m pretty sure we were about to die, or at least to be swallowed up by that machinery.”

“I know. I had that feeling as well.”

They looked at each other, conscious that the period of union in the Inhibitor data-gathering network had permitted them a level of intimacy neither had expected. They had shared very little other than fear, but Thorn at least had been shown that her fear was every bit as intense as his own, and that the Inhibitor attack had not been something she had arranged for his benefit. But there had been something more than fear, hadn’t there? There had been concern for each other’s welfare. And when the third mind had arrived, there had also been something very close to remorse.

“Thorn… did you feel the other mind?” Khouri asked.

“I felt something. Something other than you, and something other than the machinery.”

“I know who it was,” she said, knowing that it was far

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